


Cafè Food

by cirquedusorrel



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen, Implied Relationships, M/M, Pre-More Slash, Where's the line between subtle and nonexistent, Winter Falcon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-04-18
Updated: 2014-05-22
Packaged: 2018-01-19 20:29:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1482850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cirquedusorrel/pseuds/cirquedusorrel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s sometime past one in the morning when Sam wanders down a side street in Reims and strolls into the French equivalent of a diner looking for a coffee or a croissant. He doesn't expect company.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Croissants

Sam is seated at a café on a backstreet in Reims with his head to the counter when he feels someone sit down next to him. He’s got a feeling that when he looks up his night is just going to get worse. He sees the hint of metal in the crack between his arm and his counter so when he raises his head he’s not surprised to see James Buchanan Barnes sitting next to him.

Sam takes a deep breath and exhales. He’d just wanted something sweet when he left his and Steve’s hotel room a few hours before.

The last time he saw James Barnes, he was pulling the wings off his back so he thinks even Steve who still calls this man Bucky with a fond smile in remembrance will forgive him getting a bit stiff. James Barnes doesn’t seem to notice. In fact James Barnes isn’t even looking at him.

Steve calls him Bucky, but to Sam that sounds like the sort of nickname only friends are allowed to use. Barnes is too impersonal and makes Steve flinch so he calls him James.

The waitress has noticed James but she’s clearly tired so it will probably be another few minutes before she makes her way towards them. Sam is sat next to a master assassin essentially alone.

Sam looks forward, mirroring James’s position. For lack of anything better to do, he picks up his coffee and stares at the swirl of milk just barely visible still.

“How’s Steve?” James asks him, even toned but quiet.

Sam turns towards him to respond, “He’d be better if you asked him that yourself.”

“I can’t.”

Sam sips at his coffee. It’s one of the signs of PTSD—distancing themselves from loved ones. He’s assuming that James Barnes loves Steve. It’s hard not to love Steve.

The jacket James is wearing covers his arm but Sam can see the shine of his hand from were he keeps it in his lap. Their position at the counter is rather unusual for two ex-soldiers much less a world-class assassin like Winter Soldier. They have their backs to both doors as well as the wall of windows between them. Sam realizes he probably forced that with his seat.

James sat to his right though, put an almost indestructible metal arm between him and Sam. It’s not the first time he’s had to think of James Barnes like one of his patients at the VA but it’s another thing to watch a man as dangerous as Captain America curl protectively away from Sam. Like Sam was a threat to him.

 

The waitress makes her way over and James Barnes stiffens even more. Sam is grudgingly impressed with how straight his back is.

Tired and with typical French apathy she asks James, “Que voulez-vouz, monsieur?”

“Il aura un croissant.” Sam is pretty sure he mangled the conjugation there but they’ve only been in France for a week.

“I don’t need anything from you,” James mutters from the side once the waitress leaves. Sam raises an eyebrow. James is gaunt and unshaven. He looks desperately in need of help.

“Man, it’s what Steve would want me to do,” Sam tells him. It’s true and he knows what it feels like to lose a wingman. If he could sit Riley down in a French café and stuff him with food... If he could have five more minutes with Riley…If he—

Sam looks down to see he’s still holding his cup mid-air. He’s lost a few moments fantasizing about Riley again. When he looks to his right, he can see that James has been watching him. James doesn’t look away when Sam catches his gaze instead his body relaxes.

The Bucky that Steve sometimes tells him stories about was nothing like his Riley. Sam thinks he can feel it though—that feeling that lets him know that this is going to be a man he will trust forever. He’d felt it with Riley, thought he’d lost it with Riley too. Then he’d felt it with Steve. Seen it in a smile and a lean against a door in the VA. Now he sees it in the way James almost shrinks back when the waitress heads back over, croissant in hand, and then settles into his seat like he’s reminding himself to be solid in front of the world.

The waitress sets the plate with an overly large croissant powdered with sugar in front of James, takes one last sweeping look at the empty café and heads into the back. Now Sam is truly alone with James but he just feels tired instead of worried. This is supposed to be Steve’s moment.

“Steve knows you don’t want to be found,” Sam tells James Barnes because Steve would want him to know and he thinks this way he can do right by all of them. This isn’t him and Riley but these two need someone who’ll bridge the gap between them.

“He’s been hunting down and destroying what he can find of HYDRA and the people who did—“ Sam waves a hand at James’s metal arm, “—this to you.”

“I won’t go see him,” James says with more strength in his voice than Sam has heard all night. More petulance too. He sounds just the fucking same as Riley there and it makes Sam grin. He forgets how much Riley could be a dick when he’d decided he was right about something. 

James is picking at the croissant. It’s almost unconscious to reach out and take a piece like he’d do if it’d been Riley. James stills which is rather worrisome, but Sam’s already torn off a piece so he shrugs mentally and eats it. He is, after all, paying for it.

“Any messages I can bring him? Steve’s gonna want to know more.”

James stares down at the croissant. He’s moved his left arm up to the counter now so his metal hand is visible to them both now. “Does he need to know that you saw me?”

“I’m not going to lie to Steve. He won’t—He just wants you to be okay.”

“And you?”

Sam doesn’t respond, because he doesn’t have a response. He’s in this because he’s following Steve—chasing after a pair of broad shoulders and a bright grin.

When he looks over at James who clearly wasn’t expecting an answer, he sees a haunted man. A man half there and half destroyed. A man—that is also finally eating his croissant. The little pieces James had been tearing his croissant into were finally making it into his mouth. Sam realizes James had only started eating after Sam had eaten a bite.

He doesn’t know Bucky and he probably never will. He thinks he sees something in James Barnes though. Amidst the dark messy hair, blue eyes, and glint of metal is something he wants for himself.

James stands up quickly and turns towards the door. “The HYDRA bunker, by the Canal; they know Captain America is coming. It’s a trap for both of you.”

James is gone. Sam puts his head back down on the counter. He needs another coffee before he heads back to the hotel.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote like 95% of this before realizing that Bucky is sitting on Sam's right; the opposite of Steve's whole 'on your left' thing.
> 
> Inspire by these photos floating around tumblr and my initial take on them: http://sorrelrum.tumblr.com/post/81930770999/buckybarnesandmetalarms-i-think-i-found-my
> 
> French provided by Google Translate:  
> *What do you want, sir?  
> *He'll have a croissant


	2. Fish & Chips

Sam is nibbling at a French fry when James sits down next to him at a late night kebab shop. He doesn’t even say a word before he pulls the platter towards himself.

 “Hey,” Sam protests weakly. He’s more bothered by the presumption than the loss of the food. He’s not particularly hungry and this would have been his fourth meal in 3 days involving some combination of fish and/or fries if James hadn’t stolen it away.

“You ate earlier with Steve. You ordered this for me.”

“That doesn’t stop being creepy just because you keep doing it,” Sam remarks.

This is the fourth time he’s met James Barnes like this and omniscient statements like that still weird Sam out but thrill Steve when he dutifully reports back the conversations.

But James is barely listening to him. Instead he’s already scarfed down the fish and is working his way through the fries.

Sam pulls a fry from the edge of the plate. James pauses to glare at him and then continues eating.

It’s an improvement that James now trusts food if he knows Sam has been eating it. He doesn’t wait the few minutes he had the first time to see if there’s a poison or anesthetic in the food that could take him out. It speaks to an unconscious mannerism which is half the problem for a vet that’s been tortured. If something is unconscious, then pointing it out will only make it conscious and increase the overall paranoia.

Sam needs to get him to talk. No therapist is actually a mind-reader and there’s only so much he can glean from body language.

“You should join us; we eat regularly. After all, even super soldiers need food,” Sam says.

“I’m not a soldier,” James replies.

“Ghost, assassin, whatever.”

James goes back to the fries.

Sam continues, “How about a haircut? Bristol has quite a few barbers. Or I’m sure Steve would be glad to help you cut your hair.”

James ignores him. Sam doesn’t sigh though he wants to. With unresponsive vets it’s all about finding something they will respond to without actually antagonizing them. It’s one of the reasons he knows so much about sports teams. Man or woman, most soldiers have a home team that they love or love to hate. He just doesn’t want to be the man who discovers James Barnes’s feelings about the extinct Brooklyn Dodgers. He’s heard enough about that travesty from Steve to know it would probably set James off.

James is eating slower now that the fries are running out so Sam waves the man behind the counter over and orders a second plate. Sam’s paying and he’d like to be sure that James is actually full after this meal since he’s got no one to watch him all the time.

He’s worried for all the vets he works with at the VA but the dark circles under James’s eyes make his stomach clench in the way only personal worry does. Steve doesn’t sleep at night either.

 “How often do you sleep?” Sam asks.

“I don’t sleep.” James tells him between fries.

“You mean can’t sleep.” Even Steve needs regular sleep and as far as they can figure James isn’t quite as _super_ as Captain America.

“Don’t.” James says and then bites into his French fry particularly viciously.

Sam backs off the point, “Fine, far be it from me to argue with an assassin. You _don’t_ sleep.”

When the second plate arrives Sam pushes it in front of James. James glances at him in what Sam can only hope is gratitude. Failing that—interest. 

James looks down at the plate and then back at Sam.

James tells him, “Let’s get this straight. I don’t need you psychoanalyzing me and I don’t need a therapist...I would have killed you on that helicarrier if Steve hadn’t interfered.”

“Well I wasn’t exactly aiming to miss either,” Sam says.

“I’m dangerous,” James states.

“I’ve seen,” Sam replies. James always sits on Sam’s right. It’s hard to forget that James is dangerous when he can feel the hard metal of James’s left arm brush against his shoulder.  

James deflates a little when Sam matches his look. _Now_ he’s looking at Sam with interest.

James asks him, “Do you ever wonder what Steve sees in you?”

That’s not a question he really wants to answer from _Bucky_ —or what’s left of him.

“Should I?”

James doesn’t respond to Sam’s counter and Sam does sigh this time.

Sam tells him reluctantly, “I know what it’s like to lose someone…Steve and I have that in common.”

“Who?”

Sam hates having to explain this at the VA and has still told it to a hundred different vets to help them. Every time he explains the story, he uses different words but James probably only wants to know the essence. “My wingman—Riley—he fell. Out of the sky. It was an RPG.”

James looks down at his plate. “Am I him to you?”

“No. You were—You’re nothing like him. Not at all.”

God, Sam wished Steve was here so he could tell him what the expression on James’s face meant.

James asks, “Then why are you here?” _With me,_ Sam can only assume is left unsaid by James.

“I’m Steve’s friend,” Sam says. It’s true. Sam’s never been able to fall in love unless he was friends first.

“Is that all it takes to follow Steve to the ends of the earth? Friendship?” James asks.

“Yes.”

James nods like he’d expected that answered but also dabs his fry into the ketchup violently. Sam memorizes that action. He wonders if all world class assassins expressed their anger like that—though it probably wouldn’t be in his long-term health interest to piss off Natasha to test that hypothesis.

 Sam tries to revive the conversation, “I still think you should get a haircut. Steve doesn’t really like the disheveled look.”

James gives him an amused look and says, “He does like the look of a soldier though. Doesn’t he?”

Sam isn’t sure if it’s a threat or a come-on so he forgives himself for the heat pooling in his groin. He’s always been a bit of an adrenaline junkie—it’s what made him a good paratrooper. He tells James, “You’d know better than me.”

James settles into his chair like this is an old routine—ragging on Steve, “Well, he’s always been a bit easy for anyone in a uniform.”

Sam replies without thinking, “That why you joined?” He knows the look of someone a little in lust with Steve Rogers.

James huffs at that. It’s not really a laugh but Sam treasures it. He can already imagine Steve’s face at knowing that his friend can still laugh.

 “I will admit the uniform had some benefits,” James adds conspiratorially.

Sam bets. Even scruffy and tired as he is now, Sam can easily imagine how good James would look in a uniform all cleaned up. He almost says ‘ _I bet you clean up well,_ ’ when he remembers that this is James Barnes. He’s not supposed to be using pick up lines on him.

Sam’s mental distraction gives James enough time to finish the second plate and stand up. He nods towards Sam, “Take care of Steve.”

“He mostly takes care of himself,” Sam says defensively.

“Not like that—He can be stupid, sometimes.” There could be entire books written about the kind of history people have to say that kind of statement with absolute surety. There probably have been books written about the James Barnes that fell and the Steve Rogers that crashed. Sam knows the living versions though who still aren’t talking to each other.

“Yeah, but only _sometimes,”_ Sam says with a rueful shrug.

James pauses with his head bowed, “take care of yourself too.” And he’s gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I meant the comment about Steve having a thing for uniforms in jest. Bucky (and Peggy) looks good in a uniform so he's slightly biased.
> 
> (I can only assume Sam would look good in his dress blues as well since we haven't seen that yet.)


	3. Cannoli

Italy during the summer is hotter than Sam had expected. He’s thankful that he convinced Steve to rent a car because the one train ride he’d taken had caused him to sweat through his clothes.

This late in the day there’s usually enough of a breeze that sitting outside of a panetteria is relaxing. Everything he needs after yet another frustrating day of finding, fighting their way into, dismantling and fighting their way out of yet another HYDRA secret base. The finding had been particularly difficult and they’d been force into using the kind of spy subterfuge that Steve detested and Sam was sure made him seem ridiculous.

It’s enough stress to drive Sam back out of the hotel away from the struggling fan, so nicely provided by the lone hotel worker they could find, and in search of either something cold or something sweet.

He’s trying to figure the exact wording for his new argument in his continuous struggle to convince Steve to buy a linen suit when James sits down across from him. Sam is a little surprised James chose to join him since he’s sitting outside to take advantage of the breeze which leaves them at the mercy of snipers.

This is the first time that Sam can look James straight in the face. He finds it strange to see him from the front instead of the side like he’s used to. Or in old photos they find in HYDRA files. He hasn’t cut his hair but it’s clearly been washed.

It’s a good sign, even though Sam isn’t supposed to be evaluating James like that. Taking care of himself is a sign of progress. Sam would still prefer to take an electric razor to James’s hair and give him the military haircut.

His hair is tied up into a small ponytail, probably in deference to the heat. Yet he’s wearing a leather jacket.

“How can you stand the heat?” Sam asks.

James frowns at him and replies, “A metal arm is a little conspicuous…”

Sam would point out that a leather jacket in the middle of the Italian summer is also rather suspicious but James is clearly more interested in the contents of Sam’s plate.

“I don’t like overly sweet things,” James says while staring at Sam’s cannoli.

“I know. Steve told me. I, however, have had a day filled with HYDRA so I’m rewarding myself with cannoli,” Sam responds with a shrug.

Sam is like seventy percent sure that James is now pouting at his cannoli.

“You were the one who said you didn’t want to be psychoanalyzed,” Sam says before taking a large bite of his first cannoli.

James continues looking forlornly at the rapidly diminishing cannoli.

Sam adds, “I’m just saying. As a therapist I might be obliged to do the most good for your wellbeing by buying you food, but I’m off duty.”

Now James is definitely pouting. It’s cute. It kind of makes up for a day of dealing with HYDRA Nazi bullshit.

Still…..He waives the waiter over and asks, “Posso avere una piadina per il mio amico?”

As the waiter walks away, James challenges, “Friend?”

“I’m sorry, should I clarify for the waiter? What else would you call us? I don’t know enough Italian to explain why you keep talking to me.”

“Why am I talking to you?”

Sam puts down his cannoli and answers, “Because I’m the closest you’ll allow yourself to Steve.”

James immediately hunches his shoulders at the remark which makes Sam regret it a little bit. It needed to be said though. However much James is growing on him, he knows he’s only a go-between for _Bucky_.

They sit in silence for a few long minutes until the waiter reappears with the piadina. James mutters, “Grazie,” as the waiter walks back inside.

James looks at Sam until Sam relents and catches his gaze.

 “You’re not Steve. You’re your own man,” James says

“Why the hell do you keep talking to me then?” Sam challenges.

James takes a deep breath. “I…You remind me…of what it means to be human...”

Sam’s breath catches and he has to swallow down a lump in his throat.

“I feel like James Barnes. Hell, I feel like Bucky again,” James says while looking Sam in the eyes.

Sam tells him straight, “This would be a lot easier to believe if you would just go talk to Steve.”

“Nah, I missed my chance for that. He’s not waiting for me; he’s waiting for you,” James says.

“Idiot.” Sam resists banging his head on the table.

“Hey—“ James protests.

“Eat your sandwich. I already have a headache. I don’t need your stupidity to add to it.”

James just scoffs and bites into the piadina.

 

++++++++++++

Referenced some comic book moments between Sam and Bucky for [inspiration](http://scratchthemaven.tumblr.com/post/79925833001/james-bucky-barnes-winter-soldier-and-sam).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay. Finals, thesis, and graduation took all my attention. I also really struggled with this section but here it is.
> 
> But in the future you can find me at my writing tumblr: http://cirquedusorrel.tumblr.com/


End file.
